Like most people these days we recycle, re-use and re-purpose. We switch the lights off when we leave a room, and every light bulb in the house is an LED. We focus on local food, and we’ve reduced food waste down to more or less zero. We’ve given up buying bottled water. I’m vegetarian and have cut right down on dairy, too. We only drive when we have to, and we haven’t flown for years. I haunt charity shops and literally never buy new clothes. When we do our best to emit the least possible CO2, together we make a big difference.
You’re doing a great job – But what about the real sinners?
Sadly the difference we make on a personal level – even in our millions – pales into insignificance when compared to the vast amounts of CO2 belched out by the top 100 worst emitters. These dodgy businesses still chug out unbelievable, horrifying amounts of filth via their commercial activities, and until they stop we don’t stand a snowflake in hell’s chance of slowing climate change, never mind halting or reversing it.
This rotten, selfish, profit-led lot deserve to be named and shamed. The western capitalist-consumer model they operate within needs to be dismantled and redefined to serve the many, not the vanishingly few rich fools it currently serves. Sadly, pigs might fly.
These people are personally responsible for runaway climate change
As just one of the millions of powerless people in the world, all I can do is name and shame. Thanks to Decolonialatlas for this excellent infographic, which reveals the names and locations of the top 100 people who are wrecking our climate in 2019 and the companies they control. As Decolonialatlas says:
“Just 100 companies are responsible for more than 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. The guys who run those companies – and they are mostly guys – have gotten rich on the backs of literally all life on Earth. Their business model relies on the destruction of the only home humanity has ever known. Meanwhile, we misdirect our outrage at our neighbors, friends, and family for using plastic straws or not recycling. If there is anyone who deserves the outrage of all 7.5 billion of us, it’s these 100 people right here. Combined, they control the majority of the world’s mineral rights – the “right” to exploit the remaining unextracted oil, gas, and coal. They need to know that we won’t leave them alone until they agree to Keep It In The Ground. Not just their companies, but them. Now it’s personal.”
Here’s an infographic revealing the top climate-killers in Europe. Use the Decolonialatlas link above to explore their US counterparts, and the rest. If you’d like to find out more truths about climate change, you can also read articles by the brilliant George Monbiot in The Guardian.
